Going to Morocco

Since this past weekend was a puente (long weekend) in honour of the Dia de Andalucia, I went with a fellow language assistant named Eilidh to Morocco! We left last Wednesday to spend the night in Tarifa, a cute little town famous for its great wind and kite surfing beaches. We stayed at a really great, cheap hostel called "The Melting Pot" and got up early on Thursday morning to get to the port and catch the ferry to Tangiers, Morocco.

Our trip was booked through Viajes Iberia, a travel agent in Spain, so all we had to do when we got there was exchange our reservation information for ferry tickets. The agency had told us to be there by 10:00, which was good because although there weren't many people around at first, it was pretty busy by 10:30. Although the ferry was supposed to leave at 11:00am, there were so many people that had to go through customs and security before getting on the ferry, we didn't actually leave until just after noon.


Then we had to spend almost the entire ferry ride (about an hour) waiting in line to get our passports stamped to enter Morocco (apparently they do this on the boat to save time in the port). This meant that we didn't have time to change our Euros into Moroccan Dirham. We couldn't do this before the trip either, because you can only get Dirhams inside the country.

When we finally arrived in Tangiers, we were a little bit lost, as the port was somewhat chaotic. The signs everywhere were only in Arabic or French, so it was very helpful that we both speak French, but there seemed to be nothing around that was be meant for people with tour groups. Eventually we did find our group by listening to what was going on around us (in Spanish) and we all managed to make our way out of the port, through the lax Moroccan customs, and into Morocco!